John 4:46-50  So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him and besought him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The nobleman said unto him, Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said unto him, Go; thy son lives. And the man believed the word that Jesus spoke unto him, and he went.

This healing account is unique to the Gospel of John (along with three others).  I love John’s accounts —they are so rich!  Each one gives insight into the person who needed the healing.  And sometimes it was a person who needed a healing for someone else.  In this case, a “certain nobleman” came to Jesus because he needed a healing for his son.  So here we see one of seven intercessory miracles of healing that are depicted in the gospels.  The accounts of people who  came for a healing for their loved one have a totally different tenor.  Love is in operation from the get-go, and the intercessors are willing to go to great lengths for their loved ones.  “The father was a nobleman, yet the son was sick. Honours and titles are no security from sickness and death. The greatest men must go themselves to God, must become beggars.“  (www.biblehub.com Matthew Henry)

So who was this certain nobleman? “Certain” is τις, a primary enclitic indefinite pronoun.  It means “a certain” or “a certain one.”  This was a nobleman who resided in Capernaum with his family—who had embarked on the 16.47 mile trek to Cana to find Jesus.  Capernaum had a population of ~1500, and the apostle, John, came from Capernaum.  So chances were excellent that he had known the nobleman over the years.  But he chose not to reveal his identity at the time of the gospel writing (60ish A.D.?)

Was the nobleman a Jewish aristocrat?  Was he a gentile?  Nobleman is Βασιλικός- of or belonging to a king, kingly, royal, regal; of a man, the officer or minister of a prince, a courtier, befitting or worthy of a king, royal, metaphorically, principal, chief, a petty king;

“And there was a certain nobleman”—The margin shows the difference of opinion among-our translators as to what English word gives the true idea of the position of the person who is in the text called “nobleman.” The Greek word is an adjective formed from the word for “king,” and as a substantive occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It is frequent in Josephus, who uses it in our sense of courtier, or for a civil or military officer, but not for one of the royal family. The king, whose “king’s man” is here spoken of, was almost certainly Herod Antipas…The person here named may therefore be a “royalist” or “Herodian”…(www.biblehub.com  Ellicott)

The Herodians were probably members of a Jewish political party that sympathized with the Herodian dynasty on the throne and advocated submission to Rome.  But depending on his relationship/history with King Herod Antipas, the nobleman might even have been an Idumean.  Idumean is the Greek word for Edomite.  As we discussed a couple of posts ago, these descendants of Esau went through a forced conversion to Judaism approximately 150 years before Jesus’ earth-walk.  Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great, an Idumean who could have cared less about being an observant Jew.  He had a love for the temple, but murdered thousands, including five people in his immediate family, not to mention the slaughter of the innocents.  Antipas wasn’t much better—a party animal who would have John the Baptist beheaded on a hormonal whim.  It must have been a real picnic working for Antipas, but Herod’s Nobleman evidently hadn’t embraced the prevailing corporate culture—he had embraced Jesus. :-)(Years later, as John recorded his gospel, was he trying to protect the nobleman’s current station—now during Herod Agrippa II’s reign—a puppet king and total devotee of the Roman Empire?)  Regardless, in the nobleman’s reverent pursuit of Jesus, he humbled himself.  A sick child will bring you to your knees like that.:-(

Like the mother-in-law in the previous post, the nobleman’s son also had a fever.  But things had gone full cycle and he was at the point of death.  What was the cause of this fever?  The same puretos word is used as in the mother-in-law’s account—for fiery, scorching heat.  As we know, a fever is typically a symptom of something else gone radically wrong.  Although most often associated with infection, fever is also observed in other pathologic states, such as cancer, coronary artery occlusion, and disorders of the blood. It also may result from physiological stresses, such as strenuous exercise or ovulation, or from environmentally induced heat exhaustion or heat stroke.¹ John later says the fever left, but doesn’t mention anything about Jesus healing an infection, or tumor, or chronic disease.  So the root cause could have been some physiological stress or it could have been demonic in nature. 

We see three actions on the nobleman’s part:  (1) The nobleman went to the place where Jesus was. (2) The nobleman asked Him to “come down” and the Greek does mean descend. Capernaum was 700 feet below sea level, so the road dropped ~2000 feet in elevation between the two towns.  But also it could represent a figurative descent, because the father’s journey and the boy’s recovery were “a down-hill coast” after Jesus spoke the glorious words. (3) The nobleman begged Jesus to heal his beloved son.

Jesus then replied with, what seemed like, a pragmatically detached response to a suffering father — Then said Jesus unto him, Except you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. John 4:48  This almost appears to be a mild rebuke/commentary on the man’s lack of faith.  But we know from other translations, including the Greek, that Jesus was not speaking to the father alone—the “you” is plural in this verse.  Jesus actually made a generic remark for the benefit of the bystanders.  He may have been looking at the father, but He was referring to the people, as He made this timeless statement of fact.  He wanted them to believe that He was their healer…and their Messiah.  However, He knew that unless He did the dramatic, they would not believe.  He had given them the Word, but they would not believe in His messiahship without the signs and wonders.   Consequently this revealed Jesus’ intention to do the signs and wonders so that they would believe.  Indirectly He was saying to the father, “get ready for a miracle.” 

We now see four more actions: (4) The nobleman amp’d up the intensity – “Please come down before my child dies!” (5) Jesus said, “Go to Capernaum—your son lives!”  (6) The man believed!  (7) The man hit the road for Capernaum.

What happened  between (4 )and (6)? Why did the nobleman believe all of a sudden?  Was there some potent nob-verbal communication on Jesus’ part? Was it Jesus’ tone of voice? Was it His overflowing love?  Whatever it was, the man’s faith soared.  Jesus had done something to super-size that faith. Bottom line, the man didn’t have the faith for a “remote healing” at the beginning.  But by the time Jesus got through with him, he was an ardent believer.

So what can we learn about the nature of our triune God from this account?  Just like the bystanders whom Jesus spoke to in John 4:48, He wants us to believe today that He is the Healer.  More important—He is the author and the perfecter of our faith.  He will give us the faith that we need—so that we can believe for the blessings that He has promised us.

To be continued….

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¹Britannica website:  /science/fever